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Sean Gannon

Journalist - Irish & Israeli Affairs
Posted May 30, 2005

Disengagement from Democracy

Even supporters of Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza can scarcely deny that the manner in which the Israeli Prime Minister has pursued it has been nothing short of a scandal, making him appear more like an Arab constitutional dictator in the Mubarak mold than the leader of the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Why? In general terms, Shaorn's championing of a withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria is a blatant betrayal of the Israeli electorate. For while it was recently argued that “the people sitting in Knesset are there because they have received the people’s choice awards, they are there to represent parties based on the people’s voting choices,” the disengagement is in essence a spectacular repudiation of Likud's ‘voters’ choices.’ For while Sharon did warn during the general election campaign of January 2003 of the necessity of making “painful concessions,” he explicitly ruled out a unilateral withdrawal from any of the territories and in fact vehemently condemned Amram Mitzna’s Labor Party platform which promised the immediate evacuation of Gaza and a possible pullback from most of Judea and Samaria within two years. Sharon’s repeated statements that such a move would be detrimental to Israel’s negotiating and security positions convinced the voters, giving Likud a landslide victory and Labor their worst electoral result ever.

In spite of this, Sharon within the year adopted Mitzna’s policy to dismantle the settlements of Gaza as his own and has since advanced it with a vim and vigor equal to that with which he endorsed their construction in the past. Of course, the breaking of campaign promises has become almost routine in Western-style democracies, but rarely has an electorate been cheated in such breathtaking fashion.

Sharon has not only disregarded the wishes of those who voted him into power; he has ignored the demands of his own party as well. Undeterred by the resounding defeat which he suffered in the May 2003 Likud Party referendum on the issue, he continued to press ahead with preparations for disengagement despite promising to be bound by the results of the poll. His attempt to get around the ‘no vote’ by merely repackaging the published proposals was an affront to the party membership, his sacking of two National Union ministers to facilitate passage through the Cabinet of the revised text an affront to the government in general (as was his decision to sack any minister or deputy minister who voted against the plan in the Knesset last October). Sharon also ignored the Likud Central Committee’s decision last August to block his attempts to forge a pro-disengagement national unity government with Labor, which constituted, in essence, another clear rejection of the plan. While in voting down the referendum bill on 28 March, he not only went against the wishes of almost three-quarters of Likud MKs (including six ministers) but appears to have bought some of the one-quarter in favor with promises of deputy-ministerships. In the words of The Economist: “Mr Sharon’s behavior towards his party has come to resemble his behavior towards the Palestinians: he hears their objections and ploughs on regardless.”

An by orchestrating the defeat of the referendum bill in March, Sharon has not only shown contempt for the party he leads but has re-showered it on the people he purports to represent, refusing to even hear the objections of the growing number opposed to his plan. Why, if as his allies continually trumpet, an overwhelming majority support the evacuation of Gaza, is Sharon so afraid of letting Israelis have their say? True, he threatened in the run-up to the vote on the budget to allow them to do this through fresh elections but this is no solution at all. For with the Likud hopelessly split on the issue, what would a vote for the party list now mean? Those who thought they knew what it meant in January 2003 were proved sorely mistaken.

A referendum was and remains the only instrument with which to gauge the will of the nation regarding what President Moshe Katsav has called a “cardinal matter of historical significance” – the evacuation of Jews from parts of their historic homeland. In denying the people their say, the Prime Minister has struck yet another blow at his country’s democratic credentials.

© Sean Gannon 2005 Reprinted with Permission

Seán Gannon received his degree in history from University College Dublin and works as a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, publishing mainly in Ireland, Britain and Israel. He is currently preparing a book on Ireland's fraught relationship with the state of Israel since 1948 examining the influence of Catholic theological concerns on the controversy over Ireland’s recognition of Israel as a State in the 1940s and 1950s. He is also writing - Ireland for A New Extremism: The politics of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, which is a forthcoming study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London. He is a prominent advocate for Israel, being a featured writer with the Israel Hasbara Committee and chairman of the Irish Friends of Israel, a media response group which endeavors to correct the bias and error in the reporting of the Middle East conflict in Ireland.